, and close upon the
tideless water, lies the city. Behind and around on every side
stretches the famous _Conca d'Oro_, or golden shell, a plain of
marvellous fertility, so called because of its richness and also
because of its shape; for it tapers to a fine point where the
mountains meet, and spreads abroad, where they diverge, like a
cornucopia, toward the sea. The whole of this long vega is a garden,
thick with olive-groves and orange-trees, with orchards of nespole
and palms and almonds, with fig-trees and locust-trees, with
judas-trees that blush in spring, and with flowers as
multitudinously brilliant as the fretwork of sunset clouds. It was
here that in the days of the Kelbite dynasty, the sugar-cane and
cotton-tree and mulberry supplied both East and West with produce
for the banquet and the paper-mill and the silk-loom; and though
these industries are now neglected, vast gardens of cactuses still
give a strangely Oriental character to the scenery of Palermo, while
the land flows with honey-sweet wine instead of sugar. The language
in which Arabian poets extolled the charms of this fair land is even
now nowise extravagant: 'Oh how beautiful is the lakelet of the twin
palms, and the island where the spacious palace stands! The limpid
water of the double springs resembles liquid pearls, and their basin
is a sea: you would say that the branches of the trees stretched
down to see the fishes in the pool and smile at them. The great
fishes swim in those clear waters, and the birds among the gardens
tune their songs. The ripe oranges of the island are like fire that
burns on boughs of emerald; the pale lemon reminds me of a lover who
has passed the night in weeping for his absent darling. The two
palms may be compared to lovers who have gained an inaccessible
retreat against their enemies, or raise themselves erect in pride to
confound the murmurs and ill thoughts of jealous men. O palms of the
two lakelets of Palermo, may ceaseless, undisturbed, and plenteous
dews for ever keep your freshness!' Such is the poetry which suits
the environs of Palermo, where the Moorish villas of La Zisa and La
Cuba and La Favara still stand, and where the modern gardens, though
wilder, are scarcely less delightful than those beneath which King
Roger discoursed with Edrisi, and Gian da Procida surprised his
sleeping mistress.[1] The groves of oranges and lemons are an
inexhaustible source of joy: not only because of their 'golden lamps